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Smurfit Kappa rolls out new Shelf Smart service to deliver business success in store

Smurfit Kappa rolls out new Shelf Smart service to deliver business success in store

22 April 2015

Smurfit Kappa has announced the roll-out of its new Shelf Smart service at its flagship Innovation Event – a market-leading solution that will help customers develop proven packaging solutions faster than ever before.

Smurfit Kappa has developed the new Shelf Smart service with a single-minded focus on improving its customer’s product performance at the point-of-purchase. It is the first service on the market that gives customers the ability to identify their optimum shopper marketing solution in a risk-free environment, and to quickly measure the results with real shoppers. Shelf Smart merges Smurfit Kappa’s packaging expertise, shopper insights, technology, partnership strategy and effective designs, and is the latest example of the company’s commitment to unlocking new opportunities and driving measurable business success through packaging innovation.

Marketing managers have welcomed the concept as a fast, joined-up and measurable process that adds real value to their shopper marketing strategies. It follows Smurfit Kappa’s recent white paper on shopper marketing – Marketing on the Shelf - exactly how in control are you? The study revealed that 76 percent of purchase decisions are made by consumers in store, and that they take an average of 4 seconds – highlighting the extent of the commercial opportunities at the point-of-purchase, and the need for brands to develop a marketing strategy.

Arco Berkenbosch, Senior Vice President Innovation, Smurfit Kappa, explains: “At the outset of the Shelf Smart service we combine cutting-edge insights tools, such as our Shelf Viewer technology which compares the positioning and merchandising of up to 22,000 other products and placements, with our global design experience to develop bespoke packaging solutions that are tailored to real-world challenges. We then use an innovative 3D visualizer to bring the idea to life in a risk-free virtual environment, before finally testing its impact on real shoppers using online eye-tracking tools developed in collaboration with high-tech partner EyeSee. In this way Shelf Smart guarantees measurable business success for brands by proving that the service will make customers’ shopper marketing more likely to drive purchase decisions and business success.”

Smurfit Kappa has developed the Shelf Smart solution as part of its relentless focus on saving customers time and money by making a packaging solution right before it is made real, and the whole process from problem definition to proven solution takes as little as 4 to 8 weeks.

Shelf Smart is just one of a range of innovations launched at the company’s flagship Innovation Event on April 15-16th in the Netherlands. It will be made available to Smurfit Kappa customers in a phased roll-out across selected European markets in 2015, and coincides with the opening of a new Global Experience Centre at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. This site will be the showcase hub for a global network that harnesses local expertise to develop packaging solutions together with customers, and is one of the largest packaging Experience Centres in the world.

Smurfit Kappa’s network of Experience Centres and the Shelf Smart service are the latest examples of the company’s strategy to ‘Open the future’ for its customers, by delivering growth through insight and innovation. They exemplify Smurfit Kappa’s wider commitment to maximising value for its customers, by developing proven packaging innovations that drive business success and optimise consumers’ path to purchase.